I knew I would blog one day but didn't think it would happen this fast, definitely not tonight, as I sit on my couch wiped out with strep throat. But hey- gotta start somewhere. My trip to Nairobi in four days has finally inspired me to start blogging. I'm going to use this for the week, see how it feels and might use it for this summer...
A little bit on me... I'm a junior at Wake Forest University. Last semester, I spent four fabulous months abroad in Rome, Italy, eating the world's most delicious food, ever and traveling all throughout Europe. By the time I got back in December, I had been to nine new European countries. Coming back to Winston Salem, NC, has been a somewhat of a culture shock, to say the very least.
When I got back to campus my plans for the summer were to intern with Fonkoze (www.fonkoze.org), a micro finance institution in Haiti with over forty branches covering the island. I heard about Fonkoze during my internship last summer at the Grameen Foundation (http://www.grameenfoundation.org/) in Washington DC. Fonkoze and Grameen Foundation (GF) have a strong partnership, my supervisor at GF encouraged me to meet the Fonkoze USA staff while I was working with them.
The opportunity to work in Haiti alongside with Fonkoze founder and CEO, Anne Hastings, was so unique. The internship would have been an incredible opporunity to spend three months in a country where many claim micro finance is in it's "purest form" and learning firsthand every step of the micro loan process. January 12th came as a shock to the world as a catastrophic earthquake with 7.0 magnitude struck the island. The aftermath was mindblowing. An estimated three million plus people have been affected, thousands of residences and commercial buildings have been destroyed. I realized shortly after the that my summer plans had changed, although I hope to make a trip down to Haiti in early May to help out with the relief effort.
I've heard about the Nyanya Project (http://nyanyaproject.org/) throughout my three years at Wake Forest, mainly because of Ali Carroll, a ChiO in class the 2008, who sold jewelry of the Nyanya Project grandmothers. Earlier this semester I was in a meeting with a professor in the Anthropology department at Wake Forest and she told me that I should contact Professor Niepold. That next day I sent an email to Professor Niepold asking her if she had some time to meet. We met a few days later and after an hour conversation I had agreed to be a Nyanya Project intern for the semester.
Professor Niepold, established the Nyanya (meaning grandmothers in Swahili) Project after a visit to Kenya in 2006, where she learned that there are more than 2.5 million orphans, almost 1 million orphaned by AIDS; that more than 50 percent of orphans are being cared for by their grandmothers; and that there is no help from the government or other agencies specifically for these women. Niepold, a grandmother herself, returned to Africa in May 2007 and, with personal funds and donations from family and friends, established four Nyanya Project grandmother cooperatives in Kenya, two in Tanzania, and a preliminary center in Rwanda.
I've heard about the Nyanya Project (http://nyanyaproject.org/) throughout my three years at Wake Forest, mainly because of Ali Carroll, a ChiO in class the 2008, who sold jewelry of the Nyanya Project grandmothers. Earlier this semester I was in a meeting with a professor in the Anthropology department at Wake Forest and she told me that I should contact Professor Niepold. That next day I sent an email to Professor Niepold asking her if she had some time to meet. We met a few days later and after an hour conversation I had agreed to be a Nyanya Project intern for the semester.
Professor Niepold, established the Nyanya (meaning grandmothers in Swahili) Project after a visit to Kenya in 2006, where she learned that there are more than 2.5 million orphans, almost 1 million orphaned by AIDS; that more than 50 percent of orphans are being cared for by their grandmothers; and that there is no help from the government or other agencies specifically for these women. Niepold, a grandmother herself, returned to Africa in May 2007 and, with personal funds and donations from family and friends, established four Nyanya Project grandmother cooperatives in Kenya, two in Tanzania, and a preliminary center in Rwanda.
The Nyanya Project creates sustainable, grandmother cooperatives in villages and cities throughout Africa. Grandmothers of orphaned grandchildren come together to learn skills; earn, manage and reinvest income; serve as moral leaders to their families and communities; and keep their loved ones safe, healthy, and educated. This summer I will travel with Professor Niepold to Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda with funding provided by Wake Forest's Richter scholarship. I cannot express how excited I am.
Backing up a little, while all this planning and involvement in the Nyanya Project was happening, I had a phone conversation with Cathy Yi, my incredible supervisor from the Grameen Foundation. When I told her that I might be traveling to Kenya with the Nyanya Project in summer 2010, she suggested that I use the upcoming 'Africa-MiddleEast Regional Microcredit Summit Conference' website, as a resource for research and possible contacts in the region. I logged on to the site and saw a post that was calling for applicants for US University students to attend the conference as part of a student delegation. I called my brother that night and as we talked I remember saying "Ha! What if I went?" I went to bed that night, laughing to myself about the possibility of skipping a week of school to jet off to this conference in the middle of April -- right before final exams.
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